Iranian Official: Our Missiles Can Reach Ships In Persian Gulf
LMFAO
This is the funniest thing I have ever heard come from Iran.
September 18, 2008
Haaretz
A top adviser of Iran’s supreme leader has declared that in the event of war no ship passing through the oil-rich Gulf region would be beyond the reach of the country’s missiles, a government newspaper reported on Thursday.
Iran, embroiled in a standoff with the West over its nuclear ambitions, has said it could respond to any military attack by closing the strait at the southern end of the Gulf through which about 40 percent of the world’s traded oil passes.
The United States, whose Fifth Fleet is based in the Gulf state of Bahrain, has vowed to keep shipping lanes opened.
The West accuses Tehran of seeking to build nuclear warheads but Iran, the world’s fourth largest oil producer, insists its aim is to master technology to make electricity. Washington has not ruled out military action if diplomacy fails to end the row.
“At a time of war no ship can pass through the region of the Persian Gulf without being in the reach of the Revolutionary Guards’ coast-to-sea missiles,” Yahya Rahim-Safavi, a senior military adviser of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was quoted by the Iran daily as saying.
Rahim-Safavi earlier this week said Khamenei had put the elite Guards in charge of defending the Gulf against any enemy attacks and that they would not hesitate to “confront foreign forces.”
The comments came amid persistent speculation about a possible U.S. or Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities.
Iran has dismissed reports of possible U.S. or Israeli plans to strike the country, but says it would respond by attacking U.S. interests and Israel if any such assault was made.
Iran’s air force and defence units held war games this week to test equipment and boost readiness, Iranian media reported.
Alongside the regular army, Iran has a Revolutionary Guards force viewed as guardians of the Islamic ruling system.
The Guards have a separate command and their own air, sea and land units. They are deployed on sensitive border regions and guard key institutions and their arsenal includes the Shahab-3 missile, which reports say can reach targets in Israel.
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Ok who gets to explain the difference between range and accuracy to these guys? I’m sure they have a missile loaded with enough fuel to get that far. Just as I’m sure it will either destroy itself on launch, fall apart in midair or less spectacularly just miss entirely.
That’s if we don’t destroy all their missile sites once they commit an act of war. Big IF.
September 18th, 2008 at 11:08 pm
im sure the B2’s and Tomahawk’s will remove their ability to attempt that very quickly.
September 19th, 2008 at 12:53 amDon´t I remember though, not that many years ago, Iran had several shitloads of those fucking Silkworm missiles? We can counter them,sure, but can we counter ALL of them?….and, from what this dumbass piano player read at the time, it wont take very much sunken metal at all to block that strait. One or two supertankers sunk at the right/wrong place could block it for a long time, unless the article I read then was completely full of shit.
Plus, I think they´re made in China, and, thanks to Bill Clinton, don´t their shit usually work? - unlike the bottle rockets the Iranians have been popping off lately.
September 19th, 2008 at 1:35 am.
Will one of you guys up at the sharp end please clear up any mis-conceptions I may (probably) have about this?
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40%….that´s a LOT of fucking oil a LOT of people wont be getting.
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Only solution I see is a MASSIVE surprise strike in the dead of night on all their coastal defenses….and then some.
Send in Greenpeace to shut them down. Can’t let them pollute.
September 19th, 2008 at 3:11 amOh yeah? Our missles can reach ships in the gulf also…..but we launch them from a bit further away lol.
September 19th, 2008 at 4:26 amHey Hook,
I am another dumb ass like you that sees the best defense being a good offense. My son serves on a US Navy Cruiser in that area now. I have had the honor of touring that ship and I can tell you it brings a lot of hurt. Taking out the Iranian threat would just be a good morning’s work.
And it can’t happen too soon for me.
September 19th, 2008 at 4:32 amThis is mute. I would imagine that in a war with Iran, we would change the configuration of thier coastline, back a few miles anyway. So maybe they won’t be able to reach the ships from thier new locations.
September 19th, 2008 at 5:42 amIt doesn’t matter much if they do get their rockets off the pad, there are so many defense grid they have to get thru before they can even get within 100 miles of even our smallest, lightest armed ships.
All we need do is project that defense grid into the shipping lanes and problem solved.
As far as their “swarm” philosophy goes, they have limited missiles and boats, and once they see their first-strike sent to the bottom of the gulf, they’ll stop and wonder what went wrong.
September 19th, 2008 at 6:27 amHooker,
The thing about Iran is this. They learned from Saddam Hussein how to boisterously overstate their capabilities in order to fend off any attacks, or at least make their attackers take serious counter threat measures in order to slow things down a bit. They (Iran) will no doubt be over run with technology, and if they down ONE of our aircraft with or without capturing the pilot, they will consider it a victory.
Iran is, as the Persians have always been, a backwards thinking entity as a whole, exceptions granted. Hell, a good common story of how the Persians think is 300. Not the movie, but the original story about the Battle at Thermopylae. They spent 10’s of thousands to die against a technologically and tactically superior force in the Spartans. The Spartans kept slaughtering them until a traitor was found to guide the Persians around the front (Russia. Not literally but they will be today’s traitor nation. They see this as their only way to achieve their former glory and power.). Then when Greece truly unified, they were kicked back into the seas on which they came at the Battle of Salamis. The entire war at the time was simply for Xerxes to assert his self perceived divine right to rule the world. He had no desire to make the laws, just to subjugate every other leader to his will. He went so far as to insult the Spartan King Leonidas by telling him he would allow him to remain in power as a governor, and allow him to make his own regional laws with approval of Xerxes the God. It took 300 (legendary story, the true count they believe is around 600-1800) Spartans and Greeks dying beside Leonidas to unify the Greeks and piss them off enough to forcefully reject the Persians and teach them that they were, and will be for eternity, pieces of dog shit that couldn’t project power any further than they could piss, as it wasn’t God’s plan.
This, unfortunately, is going to be our modern day Thermopylae, without the 300 dying hopefully. (The terrorist attacks are not counted in this instance, primarily because they won’t be tied to Iran. They are tied to Muslim extremists, which in my opinion includes Iran; But this battle will have its own set of instigators.) If they dare come out of their shell, we will cut their turtle heads off with superior technology and battle skill. It is as it has always been. Intimidation is all that they know, and once they have intimidated enough to start believing their own bullshit, they over step their bounds. Just as happened in history. Xerxes was not the only Persian leader to attempt global domination. Mohamed took lessons from other Persian “kings”. The battles still rage, they are just harder to recognize these days. They are happening so slowly and covertly with the Muslim invasion of every nation.
This is how the Devil works, blinds you with kindness until it is too late. The Persians have always been at the hand of the Devil. They will enjoy their just rewards.
Hope this post made sense and drove home some reality to the subject. This, in my opinion is how it will go.
September 19th, 2008 at 8:12 amIn simple terms the Iranians have anti shipping missiles that would be effective against commercial shipping. They also have a small surface navy and some diesel subs.
The US, allied, and other regional navies have the resources needed to 1. defend against any attack and 2. eliminate the source.
The unknowns in the equation are timing and placement. If the Israelis launched their attack without giving the US prior notice then we might not have the right forces deployed in the area to protect it. The media frenzy over a supertanker lost in the straights with a full load of oil would be immense.
The other ‘gotcha’ is if the Iranians shoot a lot of their cheap-shit rockets in a salvo we will use a lot of costly assets to defend against them … how deep is our stockpile of antimissile rounds? I suspect that any large scale anti-shipping launch by Iran would be met with an overwhelming retaliation against the launch sites and support facilities.
Hmm … let’s see … Israel attacks their nuke sites .. Iran tries to sink tankers … we take out their incoming and then level their shore facilities …. Kind of a nice 1-2
Now let’s plan for #3 where we send the B-2’s for a follow-up on the nuke facilities and their SAM capabilities…
September 19th, 2008 at 9:25 amRahim-Safavi earlier this week said Khamenei had put the elite Guards in charge of defending the Gulf against any enemy attacks and that they would not hesitate to “confront foreign forces.” But when the shootin’ starts watch the little goat fuckers run like hell…
James Hooker (Jihad THIS!)
You all have valid points. This will be interesting to watch the next few months.
September 19th, 2008 at 10:09 amIt occurs to me that Iran would only need to sink enough of their own ships to bottle up the Strait, and not attack anyone.
—lee
September 19th, 2008 at 10:44 am